The origin of the word "credit" is the idea of "trust." Judging from the success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the readiness with which we are swiping our credit cards, there's plenty of trust to go around. But my recent 20-plus hours on the phone with no fewer...

The shaving cream hurled at Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday as he sat before a British parliamentary committee may be the only punishment he'll get. True, the tycoon -- whose News Corp holdings encompass Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, as well as giant swathes of...

"We've seen battalions of financial industry lobbyists...firms spend[ing] millions to influence the outcome of this debate....I believe we can and must put this kind of cynical politics aside." -President Obama's speech to Wall Street, Cooper Union, April 22, 2010.

Put cynical politics aside? Clearly, that is so...

The news from the G8 meeting last weekend was that billions in Western aid dollars are about to flow into Egypt and Tunisia in hopes of supporting "democratic reform," with the leaders comparing the so-called Arab Spring to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Several editorials suggested the G8 do all it can to support not...

In describing the intense lobbying efforts by Comcast last year to close its merger with NBC Universal, legal scholar Susan Crawford put it this way to the New York Times: "It's about as subtle as a wet fish in the face."

That makes last week's announcement by Federal...

It is telling that perhaps the most strident critic of a decision last week by some top Democrats to amass secret donations is a campaign finance crusader who is now out of power. Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold refused secret campaign cash from "non-profit" outside groups this past fall. And...

It's strange to think that, while attending a recent conference of some of the most illustrious names in economics and finance, the talk of the 2008 market implosion actually transported me back to eastern Europe in the years before and soon after communism fell.

When listening to the many ways...

No, this was no April Fool's Joke, said the outraged Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell. Transocean, which owned and operated the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig, put out filings April 1, stating that it had actually had its "best year in safety performance" and was rewarding its executives with...

As an international coalition bombards Libya, it's important to gauge the power of another blitz carried out by a very different, elite international coalition: the propaganda blitz conducted by the Harvard-powered consulting firm Monitor Group, using illustrious academics and public intellectuals from both sides of the Atlantic to...

Ever wonder how Libya's terrible image began showing some signs of improvement in recent years? Or how one of Gaddafi's sons would find himself named a "Young Global Leader" at Davos -- the ultimate insider's club?

The answer came in reports last week from Politico, the Huffington Post...

Grover Norquist, toast of the left?

Well, not quite, but the longtime anti-tax activist has been winning favorable mention in seemingly unusual quarters recently, for calling on his GOP and conservative brethren to at least consider debate on withdrawing from Afghanistan. With the White House this week putting out its fiscal...

Who are these "pro-Mubarak" supporters? As the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof writes, "it is absurd to think of this as simply 'clashes' between two rival groups. This was a violent government-sponsored crackdown....using not police or army troops but rather mobs of hoodlums and thugs."

Or perhaps they're just...

President Eisenhower was, of course, prophetic when he warned 50 years ago about the "grave implications" of the military-industrial complex. But while he was certainly dead-on about the big picture, we can imagine even he might be surprised by the dirty details of how that "complex" has evolved since his...

"An ethical code for economists? That's a bit like adopting a chastity vow at the Bunny Ranch."

-reader comment to the New York Times,
January 4, 2011

This comment is striking, and not just because it manages to put "economists" and "Bunny Ranch" in the same unlikely...

Surely if you asked the bankers at the center of the Sunday New York Times investigation -- "A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives" -- if they hate the free market, they would be aghast. But we oppose onerous taxation! We support fair and vigorous competition! Look,...

What was one of the crucial revelations of the latest WikiLeaks dump? According to
former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, we should be deeply concerned that the leak happened at all. He appeared early last week on Bloomberg TV and nearly a third of the time was...

What do the makers of reality TV and the makers of pornography have in common with some of America's top power brokers? It may be less of a stretch than it sounds. All three exploit (and have helped usher in) a culture of truthiness, resulting in a polarized citizenry content...

For anyone concerned about the obesity epidemic, like, say, the First Lady, documents posted on the New York Times website this Sunday make for an infuriating read. They feature a group called Dairy Management Inc., which strategized with Domino's to make a pizza line with 40 percent more...

Why does the saga of Juan Williams bring back memories of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism? Janine is a social anthropologist who studied the mechanisms of power there both before and after communism, and she recalls the officials she interviewed in communism's aftermath who gave her two, three,...